Given that a patent has now been issued for a disposable cell phone, it's safe to say that the United States is Throwaway Champion of the World. Recycling rates have shot up since the 1970s, but this country still spews forth more trash every year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported 217 million tons of municipal solid waste for 1997--more than four pounds per person each day--and projects 240 million tons by 2005.

So who's responsible for all the trash? Everyone? No one? To hear American business tell it, consumers are the ones to blame for every toothpaste box and dead appliance accumulating in landfills. Consumers buy the stuff and then toss it out, corporate spokespeople claim--never mind who creates the packaging and encourages us to do the buying in the first place. Meanwhile, the EPA vaguely talks of 'cooperation' among 'multiple players in the product chain.'

In any case, consumers pay, either through tax dollars for municipal waste systems or through higher prices for green products. Still, how the money is funneled and who's held accountable can make all the difference. Take the European concept of extended producer responsibility (EPR). Existing EPR laws are complex and various, but they essentially shift the costs of collecting, sorting, and recycling packaging waste to private industry. As Bette Fishbein of the environmental group INFORM argues in Extended Producer Responsibility: A Materials Policy for the 21st Century (INFORM, 2000), 'Since it is the producer that decides how products are designed, providing industry with a direct economic incentive seems the most efficient and effective approach [to reducing waste].'

Her measured words only hint at what a big deal this is, even if nobody here knows about it. Germany, Austria, Sweden, France, Japan, and virtually every other industrialized country but the United States now have EPR regulations. Indeed, as Joel Bleifuss writes in In These Times (April 17, 2000), 'With little fanfare and no notice in the U.S. media, Europe is fomenting an environmental revolution.' American firms may not have to deal with mandatory recycling and disposal at home, but if they want to sell in other markets, they have to comply with their EPR laws.